It was not the first time that Dr. Jamila Al-Shanti was exposed to the treachery and arrogance of the Zionist occupation. In 2006, she led a women's march of about 200 women to break the siege on the resistance fighters who were surrounded by enemy tanks in Al-Nasr Mosque in Beit Hanoun, north of the Gaza Strip.
The mosque was filled with young people that day on November 3, when they passed through the entrance to the town while the "Israeli" occupation tanks surrounded it, amidst gunfire from attack helicopters.
Three days after the march, the occupation bombed her house in an attempt to assassinate her, but it failed, as she was not inside the house, while a number of her family members were martyred.
Al-Shanti... A journey of knowledge and struggle
She is Dr. Jamila Al-Shanti, a Palestinian academic and politician. She obtained a bachelor's degree in English from Ain Shams University, then moved to work in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a teacher for 10 years.
In 1990, she returned to Gaza and joined politics, becoming a member of the Legislative Council. She then obtained a master's degree from the Islamic University of Gaza.
After that, she obtained a doctorate in educational administration in 2013 from the "Farha" College of Family Sciences at the University of Dubai in the Emirates, via "distance learning" technology. In 2013, Al-Shanti was appointed Minister of Women in the government in Gaza.
A week after the aggression on Gaza, the Zionist occupation assassinated her, ending a long journey between knowledge and jihad.
Al-Shanti was not alone, she was one of those who had a great impact on their lives in Gaza, who were writing a great effect on the path of liberation and jihad.
Al-Ara’ir... Gaza's Voice in the Western World
The word “Media” has a great impact on Palestine, as you realize when the Zionist occupation assassinated the poet and writer Dr. Rifaat Al-Ara'ir, who was the voice of Gaza in the English language in Western society.
For 20 years, Al-Ara'ir conveyed the stories of pain and suffering of the people of Gaza and Palestine, the prisoners, the wounded, and the martyrs, in addition to the youth whose dreams are besieged by the borders and prevented from achieving their successes and aspirations.
A few days before his assassination, he said in a video of a poem in English to his followers, the translation of which is: "If I am leaving... Let my death be a hope... And let you tell my story." He was keen to refute the entity's false narratives, and he considered his pen his only weapon he brandished in the face of the invaders and false propaganda. He said on the day of his martyrdom, when the events around him intensified and he felt his death was approaching: "I am an academic, and if the occupation soldiers attack my house, I will throw my pen at them... even if it is the last thing I do!"
Dr. Al-Ara'ir is an academic who taught poetry and English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he explained the works of Shakespeare, Thomas Wyatt, John Donne, and Wilfred Oy, and published the books "Gaza Does Not Silence" and "Gaza Writes Again". It pained and frightened him that the stories of the greats would become extinct with their death, so he documented them through oral history for fear that they would disappear due to modern technology.
Tayeh... The Physicist Who Resisted with Science
Despite all the severe siege that Gaza suffers from, there are heroes of science as a weapon of resistance as well in the face of the occupiers who feared their knowledge, their loftiness, and their elevation. Dr. Sufyan Tayeh was one of the scientists who refused to leave Gaza years ago.
Professor Sufyan Abdul Rahman Tayeh, born in Jabalia Camp in 1971, excelled in high school and studied physics, graduated from the Faculty of Science, Department of Physics, and then joined the faculty of the Faculty of Science as a teaching assistant, then studied for his master's and doctorate degrees, and obtained a doctorate in physics from Ain Shams University in Egypt, and became a professor of theoretical physics and applied mathematics.
Dr. Tayeh became the head of the Physics Department, and Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs, until he became the president of the Islamic University of Gaza.
Tayeh has received many international awards, including the Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Young Arab Scientists, as he was among the top 2% of researchers worldwide in 2021, based on a study conducted by the "International Publishing House" (Elsevier) and Stanford University in the United States of America.
In addition, he participated in more than 285 scientific research papers on optical and biosensing, waves, fibers, electronics, communications, solar cells, and emitting diodes, and was appointed as the holder of the UNESCO Chair for Physics and Space Sciences in Palestine. On March 3, 2022, the Deanship of Scientific Research and Graduate Studies at the Islamic University announced his victory among the names of the winners of the University Award for Scientific Research for the year 2021.
Despite the outbreak of war, Dr. Tayeh did not hesitate for a moment to walk the path of knowledge. Since the beginning of the aggression on Gaza, he took a corner of his house as a refuge for him to write research and continue walking to the peaks of glory, despite the catastrophic living conditions in northern Gaza. He took advantage of the difficult times of war by writing research and reading scientific articles.
One night during the war, the occupation bombed and assassinated a great biography of giving and influence, killing him and his family. His wife died as a martyr, his daughter a dentistry student, another studying human medicine, and his son an engineer.
Al-Rayes and Al-Rantisi... Models of sincerity and scientific giving
The young doctor, Maysara Al-Rayes, is also one of those who refused to stay in Britain and returned to Gaza with a degree in human medicine, despite everyone's surprise at his return, as he used to tell them: "Gaza and its people are the most deserving country of my experience and knowledge."
Days after the outbreak of aggression on Gaza, successive missiles blew up his house and turned him and his entire family into lifeless corpses under the rubble of the house, while his two brothers were bringing them food and they returned to find the house flattened to the ground and turned into a pile of stones and ashes, so they were saved.
They stood on the ruins of the house for a whole week digging with their hands in the hope that they could pull one of them out from under the rubble, and while they were on their seventh day, the house was bombed again and they were martyred, and thus the occupation erased the Al-Rayes family from the civil registry in Gaza in revenge for his great biography in his adherence to his homeland.
Another model who adhered to Gaza and refused to be anything but a pioneer of science in it, the young academic Ali Al-Rantisi, was offered more than one offer to leave Gaza, but he refused and wanted to have an impact on Gaza and its students.
Ali Al-Rantisi was a lecturer at the Islamic University of Gaza after becoming a teaching assistant there as he was the first in his class, and an avid researcher in the field of "geographic systems", whose teachers testified to his endless ambition, his great literature and his diligence in his academic career.
Al-Rantisi was preparing to study for his doctorate before a stray missile surprised him and his family while they were sleeping without warning them about the bombing, a month after the outbreak of the aggression on Gaza, while they were sleeping, and he passed away as a martyr with his mother and his daughter Sham who was a fetus in her mother's womb, as for his wife, she was pulled out from under the rubble with her left foot amputated.
More than 100 academics, scientists, and influential people have been targeted by the brutal occupier since the beginning of the "Al-Aqsa Flood" war on Gaza, in a clear message from the occupation seeking to completely eliminate the educational, academic, and political sectors.
